Integrating global satellite-derived data products as a pre-analysis for hydrological modelling studies
a case study for the Red River Basin
G.W.H. Simons (TU Delft - Water Resources, FutureWater)
W.G.M. Bastiaanssen (TU Delft - Water Resources, IHE Delft Institute for Water Education)
L.A. Ngô (IHE Delft Institute for Water Education)
C.R. Hain (University of Maryland)
M. Anderson (Hydrology and Remote Sensing Labaratory)
G. Senay (Colorado State University)
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Abstract
With changes in weather patterns and intensifying anthropogenic water use, there is an increasing need for spatio-temporal information on water fluxes and stocks in river basins. The assortment of satellite-derived open-access information sources on rainfall (P) and land use/land cover (LULC) is currently being expanded with the application of actual evapotranspiration (ETact) algorithms on the global scale. We demonstrate how global remotely sensed P and ETact datasets can be merged to examine hydrological processes such as storage changes and streamflow prior to applying a numerical simulation model. The study area is the Red River Basin in China in Vietnam, a generally challenging basin for remotely sensed information due to frequent cloud cover. Over this region, several satellite-based P and ETact products are compared, and performance is evaluated using rain gauge records and longer-term averaged streamflow. A method is presented for fusing multiple satellite-derived ETact estimates to generate an ensemble product that may be less susceptible, on a global basis, to errors in individual modeling approaches. Subsequently, monthly satellite-derived rainfall and ETact are combined to assess the water balance for individual subcatchments and types of land use, defined using a global land use classification improved based on auxiliary satellite data. It was found that a combination of TRMM rainfall and the ensemble ETact product is consistent with streamflow records in both space and time. It is concluded that monthly storage changes, multi-annual streamflow and water yield per LULC type in the Red River Basin can be successfully assessed based on currently available global satellite-derived products.
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